Samsung, the South Korean giant, has always been noted for its technological prowess. This year, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ have proven to be extremely popular. It is now time to usher in the next-year flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+, which may be unveiled as early as the MWC 2018. These flagship devices will likely have much better iris scanning abilities to help secure them better.
According to a report published by The Korea Herald, Samsung will look to improve the iris scanning feature in the flagship devices from 2018 while some more budget devices will receive such advanced technology from as early as 2019. The iris scanner helps in securing and identifying, without a hitch, the biometric properties of the user, based on his or her iris, and thus ensures in proper banking transactions and other activities which require a larger degree of security and confidentiality.
How does Samsung plan to go about this task? Well, as you will know, the currently available Samsung Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S8+ and the Galaxy Note 8 all have a dedicated 2MP lens meant exclusively for iris scanning. However, certain white-hat hackers have proven that these lenses can be beaten by the user’s contact lenses o even a photograph, a rather disheartening piece of news. Scary as well.
To combat this potential vulnerability, Samsung has decided to incorporate a bigger and possibly better 3MP iris scanner to ensure that a proper iris scan can be had even if the user is wearing glasses or is standing in low light or dim light conditions. The method is not entirely different from the technology which the recently launched Apple iPhone X has incorporated.
To add to the canny business sense, Samsung Pay, which uses fingerprint and iris scanning as its biometric recognition features, will also greatly benefit from the improved iris scanning feature. The more budget smartphones will receive such upgrades from next year.
Lastly, Synaptics has recently announced the world’s first in-display fingerprint scanner, which it calls the Clear ID. It may be seen in the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, likely in the middle of 2019. The Samsung Galaxy S9 devices, despite having a greater screen-to-body ratio, may miss out on this feature.